Tremendous Trifles

Tremendous Trifles

by G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton has been called the Prince of Paradox. His works include journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, fantasy and detective stories. Chesterton has great fun satirizing the Victorian sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes . These 39 tales will delight the reader. Chesterton said that these stories just came to him like sitting still and letting them light on him like flies. Some of these tales are just for fun while other are filled with good common sense.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English literary and social critic, historian, playwright, poet, Catholic theologian, debater, mystery writer and foremost, a novelist. Among the primary achievements of Chesterton's extensive writing career are the wide range of subjects written about, the large number of genres employed, and the sheer volume of publications produced. He wrote several plays, around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories and 4000 essays. Chesterton's writings without fail displayed wit and a sense of humor by incorporating paradox, yet still making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, theology, philosophy and many other topics. Chesterton uses his compilation of essays in Tremendous Trifles as a guide to reflect on everyday life. Among this collection: A Piece of Chalk -where a drawing exercise turns into a lesson on the nature of truth, Twelve Men -an explanation on why we have juries made of our peers and not professional jurors, The Dragon's Grandmother -on why we should read fairy tales to our children along with many more endearing reflections.

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Paperback, 144 pages

Published November 1st 2007 by Book Jungle (first published 1909)

tags: writing, philosophy, european literature, essays, christianity, classics, religion, short stories, nonfiction, literature, british literature, christian

Book Quotes

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”

― G.K. Chesterton

topics: Bogey, Bogeyman, Dragon, Dragons, Fairy Tales, 励志文章

“Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the thing that I felt in that jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is the man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past”

― G.K. Chesterton

“To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“The more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing, the less he knows it.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“[T]he horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policeman, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it. Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“My best friends are all either bottomless skeptics or quite uncontrollable believers . . . .”

― G.K. Chesterton

“I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of all visible things-- wink the other eye.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its Significance—Security Essential to Idea of Sleep—Night Felt as Infinite—Need of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. "The Window-Blind—Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil—Is Modesty Natural?—Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“For the perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call its triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“. . . . metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.”

― G.K. Chesterton

“There are some refusals which, though they may be done what is called conscientiously, yet carry so much of their whole horror in the very act of them, that a man must in doing them not only harden but slightly corrupt his heart. One of them was the refusal of milk to young mothers when their husbands were in the field against us. Another is the refusal of fairy tales to children.”

― G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction.

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.
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